English Fans Take a Stand

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German fans, like these for Dortmund, have been allowed to stand up and cheer for years.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By

Joshua Robinson

Updated Dec. 19, 2012 8:34 p.m. ET

English soccer has dealt with its fair share of problematic fans over the years, from the slightly disorderly to the downright dangerous, from the vaguely obscene to those who chant racist slurs. But a different kind of fan group has been making its voice heard in recent months: those who would rather not sit down.

It's more controversial than it sounds.

Clubs in the top two tiers of English soccer are currently required to have all-seater stadiums. The regulation was the fallout of the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster, which saw 96 people die in a decrepit standing area when they were crushed against rigid metal fences. The event attached a permanent stigma to standing sections.

At the time, the official inquiry blamed drunk and ticketless hooligans for the overcrowding. But when an independent panel revisited the incident this fall, it found that the police's mismanagement of the crowd had been the real problem. On Wednesday a court even dismissed the original inquest verdicts of accidental death while the Home Secretary announced a new criminal investigation into the roles of the police and the Football Association in the disaster.

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A group of English soccer fans is pushing for standing areas to be reintroduced in Premier League stadiums.
The FA/Getty Images

So with blame shifted away from the actions of the fans, this series of findings has breathed new life into the movement for safe standing.

Now, with a groundswell of support from fans, clubs, and even Members of Parliament, one fan group is leading the charge to bring back standing areas in the name of better atmospheres and cheaper tickets.

"Anybody who's gone to football matches in the last 10 or 20 years in the top two divisions in England and Wales will know that fans have always continued to stand," said Peter Daykin, the campaign coordinator of the 180,000-strong Football Supporters' Federation.

Advocates, of course, aren't proposing a return to the old-school terraces—which were often little more than concrete steps—but rather something they call safe standing, with metal railings between the rows to prevent fans tumbling forward. Daykin argued that it would certainly be safer than the standing in seated areas that is a matter of course at Premier League stadiums.

"Particularly on some of the steeper terraces where you've got a seat finishing midway through your shins: you get a bit excited, you trip over the seat, and all of a sudden you've got people falling on top of other people," he said.

Aston Villa, so far, has led the way for Premier League teams, repeatedly pledging its support. And others, including Manchester City, said that it would be worth exploring. At least a dozen other clubs from the lower rungs of English soccer have also formally backed the FSF's campaign.

Even a Labour MP, Roger Godsiff, has taken up the cause. This month, he introduced an Early Day Motion, a type of petition, in the House of Commons and hosted a panel in Parliament to argue for safe standing.

"Every week, hundreds of thousands of people watch lower-league football, rugby, pop concerts and they stand up," Godsiff said in a telephone interview. "There is no doubt about it: There is a head of steam and this will not go away."

The popular example for standing advocates is in Germany, where several clubs have embraced modern terraces. Though Germany never experienced the same kind of stadium disaster as England, it realized in the late 1980s and early 1990s that something had to be done about crowd control in crumbling old venues. Yet unlike English soccer authorities, the Bundesliga brass's answer was not to eliminate standing in 1993, but rather to improve it.

Nearly 20 years on, stands like Borussia Dortmund's Yellow Wall pulse with up to 25,000 bouncing, roaring fans. Most of them pay less than $15 a ticket. The Scottish Premier League could be headed in that direction as well, with several clubs considering a trial period for safe-standing sections.

Still, all is not perfect in the Bundesliga. A German police report released in November showed that crowd trouble was on the rise across the league and standing areas had made it difficult to identify fans bringing illegal flares into stadiums.

That echoes the concerns of the Premier League, which is still firmly opposed to any form of standing. A league spokesman wrote in an e-mail message Wednesday that it would "not be encouraging the Government to change the law."

"Since the introduction of all-seater stadia," the spokesman added, "the supporter experience has improved significantly and we have seen more diverse crowds attending Premier League matches including more women and children."

Law enforcement isn't sold yet either. "The police service has learned the lessons from previous football tragedies and would therefore need to be convinced of a need to change the existing crowd arrangements to ensure that there is not a repeat of such tragic events," Assistant Chief Constable Andy Holt said in a statement.

If, however, the FSF were able to change the league's mind and law enforcement found that it could effectively police safe-standing areas in ways that it wasn't able to 23 years ago, the clubs would still have a series of difficult decisions to make. They would have to weigh the cost of altering existing sections against the potential gains in attendance and atmosphere.

A popular solution is German club Hannover 96's. They use so-called "rail seats," which are essentially safety barriers between rows with a built-in plastic seat that flips down. That allows Hannover to have a standing area for domestic games and still comply with UEFA's all-seater stadium regulations when it participates in the Europa League.

Rail seating can accommodate 1.8 fans for every fan that traditional seating can fit, according to the FSF, and proponents suggest that higher attendance could defray some of the cost of reducing ticket prices. But for the top clubs here, that calculus likely remains years away.

"All we're campaigning for is for the government to lift the legislation of the Premier League and the Football League to change their rules so that people who want to do it can do it," Daykin said. "After that, it's a case of clubs making the business case for themselves."

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